BTS smooths Butter at Billboard Music Awards; scoops up 4 awards

BTS is unstoppable. The K-pop boy band continues to set fresh records -- becoming the first Korean band to scoop up four awards at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards (BBMA) held Sunday night at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, during which they remotely debuted their new summer track, Butter.

On May 24 (Korea Standard Time), the iconic K-pop group won four trophies at the BBMA in the following categories: Top Selling Song, Top Song Sales Artist, Top Duo/Group and Top Social Artist. Since 2017, BTS has won the Top Social Artist award for five straight years -- a testament to their immense and continued popularity.

Their autumn megahit, Dynamite, landed BTS a Grammy nomination in March of this year -- the first time for a Korean group to be nominated for that award. BTS also achieved monumental success topping Billboard's Hot 100 list. And now the group's latest single, Butter, is expected to surpass even Dynamite's success.

BUTTER ON A RECORD-BREAKING STREAK

Butter has been on a record-breaking streak. It broke the single-day streaming record on Spotify on May 21 with over 20.9 million streams -- near double that of the previous record of 10.9 million streams held by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber's track, I Don't Care, in 2019.

The YouTube premiere of the music video attracted 3.9 million concurrent viewers, beating the previous record held by BTS' Dynamite, which had drawn 3 million concurrent viewers. It also reached 100 million views in 21 hours -- three hours faster than Dynamite.

Since its release, the new summer track has been topping music charts in 18 countries, including Egypt, India, Peru, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. 

BTS shared its first-ever performance of Butter via video at the BBMA, drawing an explosive response from fans who went wild throughout the premiere.

Butter is off to a promising start. Not only is the song setting fresh records, but it has also received critical acclaim from various music media outlets and critics who are already calling it the "summer track of the year". 

Write to Soo-young Seong at syoung@hankyung.com
Danbee Lee edited this article.